Donald Trump has said the election is “absolutely rigged” by the “dishonest media” and “at many polling places”.
The Republican nominee’s comments appear to contradict his running mate Mike Pence, who told NBC earlier Donald Trump would “absolutely” accept the election result, despite media “bias”.
Donald Trump’s adviser Rudy Giuliani has also accused Democrats of “cheating”.
Polls suggest Donald Trump is losing ground in some of the key battleground states.
Meanwhile Hillary Clinton’s running mate Tim Kaine has blasted Donald Trump’s election-rigging claims as “scare tactics”.
Donald Trump has questioned the legitimacy of the election process in a series of tweets, the latest of which said: “The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary – but also at many polling places – SAD.”
Earlier, Donald Trump accused the press of inaccurate reporting: “Election is being rigged by the media, in a coordinated effort with the Clinton campaign, by putting stories that never happened into news!”
However, speaking on NBC’s Meet The Press, Mike Pence said the American people were “tired of the obvious bias in the national media” which was “where the sense of a rigged election goes”, but said: “We will absolutely accept the results of the election.”
“Elections always get pretty rough,” he added, but said the US has a tradition of “the peaceful transfer of power”.
Meanwhile Rudy Giuliani told CNN’s State of the Union that he’d have to be a “moron” to think that some elections, such as those in Philadelphia and Chicago, were going to be fair.
“I’ve found very few situations where Republicans cheat… they don’t control the inner cities the way Democrats do. Maybe if Republicans controlled the inner cities, they’d do as much cheating as Democrats,” he said.
“I’m sorry. Dead people generally vote for Democrats rather than Republicans,” he added.
Tim Kaine told ABC’s This Week Donald Trump was “swinging at every phantom of his own imagination” because “he knows he’s losing”.
“He’s blaming the media. He’s blaming the GOP. He’s saying that America can’t run a fair election.
“He’s making weird claims that, no, I couldn’t have assaulted this person, she’s not attractive enough to assault. How bizarre is that?… And this is what bullies do.”
Multiple women have come forward to accuse Donald Trump of groping or kissing them this week, following the emergence of a 2005 video tape in which he made inappropriate remarks about women.
Donald Trump has repeatedly denied the claims, calling the women “horrible liars” and accusing the media of being an agent of the “Clinton machine”.
Tim Kaine denied that the Clinton campaign had anything to do with the women making accusations against Donald Trump.
On October 15, House speaker Republican Paul Ryan criticized Donald Trump for questioning the validity of the electoral process.
“Our democracy relies on confidence in election results, and the speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity,” his spokesperson AshLee Strong said.
It’s not the first time Donald Trump has directly contradicted his running mate during the campaign, with them clashing over how to solve the war in Syria.
In the vice presidential debate, Mike Pence said the Trump administration would impose a safe zone in Syria, “stand up” to Russian aggression and go after Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
But in the second presidential debate, Donald Trump claimed that although he didn’t “like Assad”, the Syrian president was “killing ISIL [ISIS]”.
